Destiny concealed, p.17
Destiny Concealed, page 17
Casey watched the sprawl of forest take over from suburban houses, the trees streaking past in flashes of white and green.
“How much farther?” she asked Saxon, not really caring what the answer might be. She just liked the way his blue eyes darted to the rearview mirror to look at her.
“About a mile.”
His answer didn’t matter. She was going to ask again in three…two…one…
“How much farther?”
His eyes were narrowed when he looked at her this time, which only made him look sexier if that was even possible. “Were you even listening to the answer I gave you less than five seconds ago?”
“No,” she replied, grinning when he growled. “Soooo—how much farther?”
“Ignore her,” Alex drawled, turning to look at her over his shoulder. “I know I do.”
Casey flipped him off and looked back to find Saxon watching her once more. “Eyes on the road, handsome. I don’t want to ruin my pretty face by going through the windshield.”
His wolf surged forward before he looked back at the slick blacktop they were driving on. Smiling smugly, Casey glanced out the window as they slowed to turn into a long gravel driveway. The forest followed them all the way down to a large circular driveway at the end of the road.
Saxon stopped the car behind some big environmentally irresponsible SUV and cut the engine. The sound of car doors slamming shut seemed to echo. Saxon led the way up the few porch steps to the front door, his fist rising to knock. Casey took a second to enjoy the view, liking the way Saxon’s jeans were snug against that fine ass of his. His shirt was tucked into the waistband of his pants; her fingers twitched to pull the fabric free, to run rampant under his shirt all over his hot skin.
His head swung around then, his eyes flashing, the scent of his arousal hitting her nostrils. Damn, he could read her so well. Giving him a devil-may-care smile, she said, “I can’t enjoy the view with you glaring at me like that, handsome.”
He let out a frustrated huff just as the door to the pack house opened up. A huge wolf with military-style short hair and grey eyes filled up the doorway. In an instant, she could tell he was the more dominant wolf and dropped her gaze to his chin. She felt his eyes rake over her.
“Daddy!” a little voice called, drawing Casey’s attention. She risked glancing up, seeing the Helheim wolf smile as a human woman approached him with a child in each of her arms.
“She wanted her daddy,” the woman said, reaching up onto her toes to kiss his cheek. She handed over one of the squirming children. He took the little girl into his huge arms, cradling her gently against his huge chest.
“Saxon, Rhett’s expecting you. Go on through.”
“Thanks, Vaile,” Saxon replied, stepping past the guy and walking farther into the house. Alex waved Casey through before him. She gave Vaile a wide berth and slipped around him into the hallway, but Alex stopped to talk to him.
“Wolfe,” Alex said, offering Vaile his palm. By some miracle, Vaile took it. “When did you become a daddy?”
“About the same time you became an asshole,” Vaile replied, his expression serious.
Alex actually looked chagrinned. “Yeah, well…”
“What the fuck happened to you?”
Alex shrugged. “I still haven’t gotten my head around that.”
Vaile grunted. “The alpha is waiting for you.”
Alex nodded stiffly and turned to see Casey watching him. “You waiting for me?”
“Just keeping you out of trouble,” she shot back, turning on her heel and marching down the hall. Alex already knew who Vaile was, but how was that possible?
Using her nose, Casey followed Saxon’s scent to a door left open to the hallway. Inside the room, she found an office that was quite modern. A large glass desk took up a third of the room, a sleek and expensive-looking computer monitor sitting in the corner of it.
Behind the desk was a leather chair that still smelled new. On the opposite wall to the desk were two large sofas, with a small fridge in between them acting as a table of sorts. On top of the fridge were some glasses and a few mugs.
Saxon was standing in front of a large bookshelf, looking at something he was holding. Sauntering over to him, she peered around his arm to see what held his attention so completely.
It was a photograph in an expensive gold frame. Saxon’s smiling face stared back out at him, Saskia held close to his body. Saxon seemed to notice her then, his head jerking around, his nostrils flaring.
Casey cleared her throat. “When was this taken?” she asked, her eyes lingering on the easy, relaxed expression on Saxon’s face. She liked seeing him like that.
“Last year,” another voice replied from behind her. She spun around, her wolf already cowering at the power of the alpha who now stood before her. His mismatched eyes were relaxed, despite having a foreign wolf standing in his office. This must be Rhett.
Rhett took the photo from Saxon and looked down at it. “After the pack house burned down, and we had it rebuilt, I asked all the wolves of my pack to leave a photo of themselves to help build some new memories.”
Rhett handed the photo back to Saxon, then moved behind the desk; he practically fell into the leather chair. “But you didn’t drive all the way out here to hear about that, did you?” he asked, steepling his fingers under his chin. “Take a seat. We have some business to attend to.”
Casey noticed that Alex was already sitting down. Saxon sat on the other side of the couch leaving Casey to occupy the middle. Vaile strolled in then, followed by another male whose dark hair and blue eyes made a shiver crawl down Casey’s spine.
Vaile took up the space behind Rhett’s right shoulder, and the other man took the left.
“What’s your name?” Rhett asked. Casey’s eyes were in her lap when the question was asked. Glancing sideways at the other men, it quickly became obvious the alpha was talking to her.
“Casey,” she replied.
“And what pack are you from, Casey?”
“The Alfheim pack.”
Rhett leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t remember getting a call from Acario asking permission to have one of his wolves in my territory.”
Casey lifted her eyes to his chin. “He doesn’t know—”
A phone began to ring, cutting off her words. Rhett glanced down at his desk and frowned. Picking up the phone, he held it to his ear.
“Hello?” he said. “Acario, we were just talking about you.”
Casey’s fingernails were suddenly digging into the tops of her thighs. Saxon shifted beside her, leaning in to whisper into her ear.
“Something wrong?”
She shook her head, trying to relax her body. Rhett was still talking to her father, throwing a lot of “uh huhs” and “yeses” at him. On more than one occasion, she could feel his gaze on her, but she dare not look up.
After what felt like a lifetime of holding her breath, Rhett finally hung up. “It seems like your father is a little upset you’re gone,” Rhett said.
From the corner of her eye, Casey saw Saxon’s head swing around like it had just come unhinged; the question he wanted to ask was burning in his eyes. She ignored him, focusing all her attention on Rhett.
“I plan on leaving as soon as we’re done here.”
“That’s good. But I still want to know what you’re doing here.”
Casey licked her lips and looked over at Alex. Her chest rose and fell as she drew in a breath through her nose. “It’s a long story.”
Rhett opened his hands. “I’ve not got anything else to do.”
She nodded and slipped to the edge of the sofa. “I found Alex within our borders. From what I could tell, he was about two days into the Change. I had two options: either leave him there, or take him back to the pack house. I convinced my brothers to take him back with us. My father instructed us to keep an eye on him. If he pulled through the Change okay, we were going to absorb him into the pack, but…”
“But I didn’t want to stay there,” Alex interrupted. “It was my choice to leave, but Casey followed and I didn’t stop her.”
“You told him of the risks?” Rhett asked Casey.
“Yes. I told him he’d be killed on sight if one of the enforcers found him, but they didn’t; Saskia did.”
Rhett’s eyes narrowed on Saxon. “Is that true?”
Saxon nodded. “Saskia went for an early morning run and came across them. She brought them back to my apartment.”
“Why didn’t she bring them here?” Rhett asked.
Saxon’s denim-blue eyes rose for a moment before falling to his tightly clasped hands. “She wasn’t thinking clearly,” he replied.
“He isn’t the first one we’ve found,” Casey interjected, drawing the alpha’s attention away from Saxon. “We’ve been getting more and more Bitten wolves on our lands. We’ve admitted more than a dozen in the past year.”
“And the others?” the brown-haired wolf on Rhett’s left asked.
“Terminated,” Casey replied in a small voice. “They were too far gone; their wolf had completely taken over their humanity.”
The male snarled, the sound only stopping when Rhett barked, “Sabel!”
Pressing on, she said, “I think whoever has been creating all these Bitten wolves is also responsible for Alex.”
It was Vaile’s turn to react to her statement. His grey eyes fixed on Saxon before ratcheting to Alex.
“You can’t tell?” he asked.
She shook her head. “We don’t have anyone in the pack with a nose good enough. We don’t even know if it’s just one person doing the biting, or if there are multiple people acting under the orders of someone else.”
“And what more has your father done?” Rhett asked.
“The only thing he can do is accept the wolves that have made it through the Change, and to kill those who haven’t. We don’t know where to start looking for the culprit.”
Rhett sat back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. “Casey, I want you to go and wait outside. I need to speak to Alex for a moment. Saxon, you can join her.”
Casey did as she was asked, standing up on suddenly unsteady feet and walking to the door. She gave Alex an encouraging smile and slipped from the room with Saxon on her heels. With the door shut behind them, Casey let out a deep breath and slumped against the wall.
“You’re the alpha’s daughter?” Saxon asked quietly. He was propped up against the wall opposite her.
“Yeah. So?”
He looked away. “Never mind.”
When it was clear there was nothing else to be said, Casey settled down onto her haunches and leaned against the wall. Her mind had just started to drift when the sound of laughter coming from somewhere farther in the house snagged her attention. She stood up and followed the voices.
“Casey!” Saxon hissed behind her. Ignoring him, she wandered through a doorway and stepped into a large, modern kitchen. There were four females there; two werewolves, a human and one she couldn’t place.
The unidentified female was standing at the bench, her head bent over some dough she was kneading. The human from before—Vaile’s mate—was just lifting a young child from a highchair while another blonde female had another child with the same striking blonde hair and blue eyes. She realized they were twins. An older wolf sat in a comfortable-looking chair in the corner.
As soon as Casey’s scent registered, the wolves and the female kneading the bread looked in her direction. Casey smiled and waved at the others, but jerked back in surprise at the woman behind the bench. Her eyes were a vibrant violet that seemed to glow.
“You’re…you’re…” Casey couldn’t get her mouth and brain to work at the same time. “You’re…”
“My name’s Indi. And you are?”
“Casey,” she replied. Indi was the felvair who had been the cause of the uprising a year ago. She was the reason the packs had gone to war. Without her blood, the chances of a female werewolf having a baby girl were about one in ten. With her blood, though, every pregnancy would result in a girl. And with the current male to female ratio in packs, more girls being born was a very good thing—especially for Casey.
“Why are you here?” another female asked, clutching the child carefully to her chest.
“I was bored,” she replied without thinking. When she got some frowns, she cleared her throat and added, “I brought Alex home.”
Nobody in the room seemed to react to that except for the human.
“Alex D’Angelo?” she asked.
Casey nodded.
“Where’s he been?”
“He was bitten. I found him in my father’s territory.”
“Is he okay?” The child in her arms squirmed free and walked unsteadily over to the older woman in the chair.
“Seems to be,” Casey replied, watching the little girl waddle. More questions were poised on the tip of her tongue when Saxon stepped up behind her.
“Come back to the office, Casey.”
It wasn’t a command she wanted to listen to, but she went with him, giving the women a wave goodbye.
“You can’t just walk off and introduce yourself to the females of this house,” Saxon hissed under his breath, taking hold of her arm and pulling her to a stop within an inch of his body.
She would have been really turned on if he hadn’t been so damn authoritative. Pulling free from his grip, she crossed her arms tightly across her chest and gave him a cold look. “I don’t remember giving you permission to touch me, or tell me what to do, handsome.”
Saxon paled and took a step away from her. He looked down, his voice holding an edge she couldn’t pick. “You can’t just waltz off and do whatever you want to do, Casey. You’re in the alpha’s house now.”
She snorted. “Sorry, but that’s never stopped me from doing anything before,” she replied. “Besides, if I want to do something, I’ll just go and do it.”
“Like following Alex?”
She smiled. “Yeah, like following Alex. And this, too.” Without giving him any more warning about her intentions, Casey stretched up on her toes and pressed her mouth to his.
A surge of electricity pounded through her body at the connection, making her skin tighten and her brain short circuit. She had never experienced something like that before. It was as if she’d just been plugged straight into an electrical main, and her body was still sparking. Saxon wrapped his arms around her waist, dragged her closer to him and slanted his mouth over hers to deepen the kiss. A shudder rode her spine, goosebumps filling the skin on her arms. There was such passion in his kiss, almost as if he’d been wanting—needing—her for so long. She knew then that he felt it too—this connection between them.
The office door opened then, and just like that, the moment was over. Saxon jumped back from her, breathing heavily. Casey watched the way his eyes darted away from her to Sabel, who was standing in the doorway.
“Your turn, Saxon,” he said.
“Okay. Thanks,” Saxon muttered. He disappeared into the room without glancing back at her. Sabel followed. When the door was once again firmly shut, Casey felt her body become boneless. She touched her fingers to her mouth, still feeling Saxon, still tasting him.
“God. Damn. That man can kiss.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Alex slouched back into the couch cushions as he watched Saxon and Casey leave the room. He felt balanced when they were there, and their departure left his wolf shifting uneasily. It was such a strange sensation, having another entity sharing the same skin as him, but in a way he also couldn’t remember what life had been like before he’d been bitten.
“How much have you been told?” Rhett asked, not messing around. Alex liked that.
“About what?”
“Being a werewolf, but more specifically being a Bitten wolf.”
He shrugged. “Not much. Figured I’d learn on the job.”
Rhett’s mismatched eyes narrowed on his face, and Alex fought not to squirm. Alex’s wolf was cowering from the guy, his tail between his legs.
“He’s showing his submissiveness to the more dominant wolf,” Vaile said from his position on Rhett’s right shoulder. “Instincts will save your ass more times than you’ll know. Listen to your wolf.”
Yeah, okay. Submissive. Alex could sense the power coming off Rhett. He could feel it coming off of Vaile, too. He thought back to all the times he got a strange vibe off of his best detective. It was like a tangible volatility. He was a living, breathing threat, but he hadn’t realized at the time that it was his wolf doing all the talking.
Alex’s eyes swung to the other male in the room. His dark hair was long in the front, shielding his blue eyes from view. He could taste the dominance of this one, but in his mind, Alex could see his own wolf snarling in challenge.
The guy took a step forward, causing Alex to jack-knife up from his chair.
“Sabel,” Rhett said in a normal, almost bored tone. “Leave him. He doesn’t know how it works yet.”
“How what works?” Alex asked, still holding Sabel’s eyes. A trickled growl filtered through the room, the smell of anger and irritation washing over him.
“I said enough!” Rhett said again. Inexplicably, Alex could feel his knees give out, forcing him back down onto his ass.
Breathlessly, Alex looked up again, not meeting Rhett’s eyes. “What the fuck was that?”
The alpha’s mouth quirked up. “Me. Pull that shit again and I won’t stop Sabel from attacking you, and believe me you haven’t got what it takes to meet him head-on just yet.”
“He never will,” Sabel spat back, his whole body vibrating.
“So,” Rhett started, “you’re now a Bitten wolf. There’s just one little problem.”
Alex shifted his gaze to Rhett’s chest. “What’s that?”
“We don’t admit Bitten wolves into our pack. So, what does this mean for you? It means that tomorrow morning, you’ll be returning to the Alfheim pack. I’ll call Acario back to confirm, but it shouldn’t be an issue.”
“But I don’t want to go back there. My life is here. My job is here.”
“Get a transfer. It can’t be that difficult.”
